[POLITICO] The Service Employees International Union Florida and an array of community groups announced Tuesday they plan to spend more than $500,000 and radio and online ads targeting Latino millennials, African-American and Haitian-American voters in Florida.The ads are designed to encourage these groups -- some 4 million people -- to get out and vote in the nation's biggest battleground state. SEIU Florida and the other groups have spent months going door-to-door contacting minority voters all over the state.
"Our campaign intends to educate the voter that their votes are directly related to how the policies and practices are crafted at local and federal level," said Alphonso Mayfield, SEIU’s State Director for the 2016 Election Campaign.
He said the major campaigns are too "focused on parties and candidates," instead "of the real issues that impact our communities." Among the issues: a minimum wage increase, access to affordable healthcare and education, and immigration reform.
The $510,000 ad buy is timed with the kickoff of early in-person voting in Florida, which began Monday in most of the state. The ads will begin running today and will air in the following counties: Miami Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Pinellas, Orange, Osceola, Pensacola, Leon and Duval counties. The digital ads will appear on the music website Pandora.
As of Tuesday morning, more than 1.6 million Floridians had already cast pre-Election Day ballots. About 665,000, or 42 percent, were made by Florida Republicans and 658,000, or 41 percent were made by Democrats. The rest were either third-party voters or No Party Affiliation voters.